[PVP Ret] Maths & stats

Hi,

I'm an old paladin, but I guess that, like many, I always followed the masses. Template, gemming resilience, favoring crit instead of mastery ...

Today, with the new patch, I was wondering ... " What if ? " ... because anyway, I never really understood, in terms of maths, the impact some changes would have on the damage/survivability. Could you help me answer a few questions with precisions, in a BG / RBG point of view, more than arenas.

- Mastery vs Crit

Does someone have an idea, in terms of numbers, of what it would change in terms of healing/damage, between two players, one whose offstat is Crit, and the other one whose offstat is Mastery ?

- Gemming

Let's say tomorrow a player comes back to an old pure " Strength & PVP Power " gemming, instead of privileging Resilience over almost everything. Would the Strength & PVP Power make a REAL difference in his damage & healing output (let's say 20 % more, I don't know, part of the question ) ? Would the loss of resilience be a drama ?

Some might say I should try, but everytime I try something, I'm more hesitant reading the results compared to what I usually read here and there ... last one was the new SoJ compared to SoT ... my tests on a dummy were really bad for SoJ in terms of damage but that's not what I read, so I prefer to ask about my new wonderings

That's all, I was just wondering if a " Mastery + Strength/PVP Power " optimized ret would have a really larger damage/healing output compared to our classical " Crit & Resilience ", and if anybody has a vague idea of " how much " it could be in % ?

I guess I don't really understand what you're trying to ask? Like a PvP theorycrafting of stats?

I'm afraid it can't be done, too many variables, there's no math and numbers to go with here but there is Needs and there is Answers to those needs.

I'll start by telling you, Haste > Crit > Mastery.
Mastery on it's own is pretty good but getting the most use of it will get you killed.

Know your role: Simply, Retribution is more of a Hit and Run than Sustained/Uptime. In order to hold Mastery to it's best potential you'd have to use nearly all your Holy Power for damage on TVs.. Right now, a lot of Holy Power goes on WoG, in Cata this wasn't an issue as WoG had a 10sec Cooldown and TV was a lot stronger, forcing you to use WoG strategically with Last Word, therefore TV and mastery made almost all of our damage.

Sustained damage: Ret's sustained damage is garbage, you depend a lot on very quick reactions to snares and roots, you'll be lured out and bursted as often as available to the enemy, this goes with Hit and Run.. you don't often stay in Melee range except to use CS or one TV when HP capped, your biggest damage tools here are Judgement, Exorcism, Holy Prism and Censure all of which aren't affected by Mastery, the other times you'll be on your toes to support your team as much as you can, they bring the sustained and the CC. you bring the Burst.. if well timed it works, not nearly as good as it used to, but the alternative is.....(*)

Survivability: (*)... staying in Melee range for more damage will get you killed, staying anywhere will get you killed...

Haste and Crit affect how you survive, whereas Mastery doesn't, nothing feels as gratifying as critting a FoL on a teammate that is in dire need of healing, but, how does the player itself cope with the damage?

Ret's best and only defense mechanic is control of their ground, effective health and smart-healing.
Many classes like to (because they can without you being able to respond) open on you, some bullshit ones can pull a full row of dots in one global or send their warmongering pets on you to do kinds of damage and CC we once saw as unthinkable for a NPC to be capable of.

Haste and Crit do well on generating you Holy Power and giving more kick to your heals but they can't prevent shit from happening to you, nothing can, and in that hour of darkness where you can't respond with your active defenses you need something to take care of you...

Gemming: ...that something is Resilience. Until we get a new defensive cooldown or some sort of redesign on how we mitigate damage, our best natural defense is Resil.
Point by point it was proven to be better than any other stat, but with 5.2 the balanced shifted in favor of Power adding healing and Resilience scaling linearly instead of exponentially, but is it enough for Power to help?

I already touched the subject of Ret's healing defenses, so it'd seem intuitive to get power and ask you team mate for peels.. or does it?

Among a couple of builds I tried in the PTR I even used one with a 4PC PVE and full Power gemming.
I felt the only way to increase damage was with a bonus that could be passively active and not screaming I HAVE WINGS CC ME.

This worked well, the 4pc Holy Templar does a lot of damage and managed to make me fearsome in a sustained damage course.
However unlike the Dragon Soul set, we are severely handicapped with all the damage we can take and all the CC that goes out is insane, this doesn't cut it anymore...
I went back to the PvP set and the effectiveness was notable in the form of survivability, but 10000000 * 0 is still zero and my sustained damage garbage was still garbage.

In the end, Power beats Strength in all scenarios for damage and healing, and furiously stacking Power you won't get much more than 5% more healing.

Resilience once again trumps, with it's nerfed but never-ending effective health scaling, it provided me with quite more damage opportunity than power by allowing me more time to pressure, less maintenance needed of my peers and holy power healing and it couples perfectly with our range toolkit arsenals, the more you can stay away the best you can recover.

Thanks for your analysis Veliane it was what I needed ... so ... back to resilience that's amazing how few possibilities we have. I'd like something like " In this configuration, I'll hit like a truck at the cost of resilience, but eh with a pocket heal on the way to the FC with the rest of the team, I'll break him straight. ", something more mixed, or even a true defensive gemming. The way I feel is that you don't really have a choice. From what I understand, stacking PVP Power to the cost of resilience wouldn't be a huge damage increase but would be at the cost of much survivability. I've got the feeling we can't really fine tune things.

Although it seems only logical to go the resiliance way; I have however one addition to make.

Healing on Retri *and on any hybride* has improved by taken pvp power into account. This gives an intresting dillema; resliance and getting less damage or pvp power and getting more healing off (and damage)

I am a bad theorycrafter myself but sofar I am trying the pvp power route. Regemming is rather cheap.

ps: little off topic: does sacred shield also take pvp power into account?

Although it seems only logical to go the resiliance way; I have however one addition to make.

It's not an addition I've already addressed all of this.

In the end, Power beats Strength in all scenarios for damage and healing, and furiously stacking Power you won't get much more than 5% more healing.

Let's take a look at a power v res cost/benefit with my stats (378k HP, 68% resil, 48% power).

My effective health right now is 1.181.250 and my effective healing is 12% plus.

If I went Power: (378k HP, 61% Resil, 65% Power). That's an effective gain of 4.25% more healing.

My health however would be 969.230 or a loss of 212.020 points of effective health.

Put in perspective if a Flash of Light, Word of glory and Holy Prism were to ALL crit I'd do approximately 230k healing on myself with battle fatigue on a window of 4.5 seconds.

Here's your breakdown:

Power: You gained 9775 active healing in 3 globals.

Resilience: You gained 212 THOUSAND passive health at all times.

Ergo, you'd need to cast 22 times a combination of all flash of light + wog + selfcast holy prism on yourself, all of which must be critical heals and no overhealing done, to equal the ammount of health lost...

Going by the cooldown of Holy Prism this would take 7 minutes and a half.

Using Flash of Light alone you'd need to cast it 19 criticals or ~40 regular casts.

Or 9 FoL crits and 12 WoG crits.

Etc, etc etc.

Originally Posted by Eminus

ps: little off topic: does sacred shield also take pvp power into account?

Negative kimosabi, Sacred Shield operates on Stre > AP = SP < INT, sadly power doesn't make it more effective, but if it did it would be waaaay too good for Holy.

But in terms of pure damage, is it a net increase to focus on PVP Power ? I think I remember PVP Power is linear, so I don't know where it goes if, as in your example, +35 % PVP Power between your Power / Res optimizations, in terms of damage increase ?

But in terms of pure damage, is it a net increase to focus on PVP Power?

Well yes, Power gives you a linear % damage increase, how could it not?

Right now you can't choose wether to be pretty tough. (Cata Full PVP SET).
Glass Cannon (2pc Tier + Dragon Soul Heroic Trinkets).
or in between (Cata PVP SET with PvE Heroic Legs and Shoulders Gemmed for Stre/Resil).

There's no science or beauty behind Ret PVP atm so I know how you feel.

I personally sported full power for a while, and in theory it sounds great but I'd get turned into a potato mash way faster than I could do unto others.. and CC'd the rest of the time.

Akin to something you'd pick out from the useless super powers thread. "The power to do amazing damage only while CC'd!"

Though if the state of CC was to take a big hit, this would be very viable.

For instance, on my shaman, I play 2v2 arenas as Resto with a Ret paladin. Since, being the healer I'm always the target, she can freely pick up more PvP power gems and stuff.

On my main I play as Ret on 2v2 with a Shadow Priest and here I'm the target too so I always go for Resillience when I can. (Don't mind my current set much as I did change it a little bit due to season end and the fact that I can't take my PvP gear off in Isle of Thunder or I die in half a sec).